Baseball Summer

My spouse and I managed to visit 4 ballparks this summer, taking in 2 minor league games and a Cincinnati Reds game, plus we visited a ballpark used by the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League decades ago. 

These are ordered in reverse chronological order. The first 2 photos are from an August 20 game in Louisville between the Bats and the visiting Omaha Storm Chasers. Omaha is a KC Royals affiliate and a friend had nabbed some free tickets (they were excellent!)

As shown on the big screen, outfielder Drew Waters played in his last minor league game prior to his August 22 promotion to KC -- and it was Captain Marvel night at the ballpark. Omaha won 10-6, Waters was on base 4 times with 2 singles and 2 walks. 

Side note: I'm working with a graduate student writing about Captain America's films. 

I've been to Slugger Field many times. In fact, I went to 4 games in 2021, so this season has not been as active a year locally. As I went to 3 last September, I still have some time. 

                

These next 2 photos were taken Sunday June 26 at Four Winds Field in South Bend, IN. We took in the South Bend Cubs game versus the Peoria Chiefs, which the Cubs won 10-7. Pictured at right is leadoff hitter centerfielder Pete Crow Armstrong, one of the Cubs top prospects. He was actually the NY Mets top draft pick in 2020 and came over in the Javy Baez trade in July 2021. 

Earlier that week, on Monday June 20, we had a picnic lunch at Marsh Field in Muskegon, MI. As noted above, this was an original park for the professional women's team that played there after World War II. Earlier this summer I read Lois Browne's book Girls of Summer about the league and of course "A League of Their Own" is a fine baseball film. 

Finally, back on June 9, we went up to Cincy for an early Reds day game against the Diamondbacks. Thanks are due to my daughter Cate as she had given me a gift certificate voucher as a gift.

The Reds lost 5-4, wasting a fine pitching performance from Tyler Mahle (10 strikeouts in 6 IP with only 1 ER allowed) and an early 3-0 lead. Typically for this year's Reds unit, the bullpen gave up 4 runs in the 9th inning. Josh Rojas (pictured on the screen) hit the go-ahead 2 run single in the 9th and scored the decisive 5th run (rendering the Mark Reynolds HR in the bottom of the 9th moot).

It was fun being back at a major league ballpark and our seats were fantastic. 

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Pete Browning

As I've previously blogged, I've walked many of Louisville's nearby cemeteries this year -- it's a way to get some exercise while avoiding other people during a pandemic. 

Months ago, I walked to one of the city's most famous burial grounds, Cave Hill, and found the grave of Major League Baseball player Pete Browning, who played in Louisville for the Colonels during the 1880s and died in 1905. 

Browning was a star player, leading his league in hitting three times and compiling an overall record that arguably should have landed him in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He twice led his league in on base average and once in slugging, and twice led in OPS+, which is a ballpark adjusted measure of offensive contributions based upon on base average plus slugging percentage. The guy could hit.

His nickname was "The Louisville Slugger." 

Browning is buried within walking distance of my home -- and not far from Colonel Sanders and Muhammed Ali, two other local legends who are buried in the same cemetery. I've previously visited both of their gravesites as well. Paul Hornung is a 2020 addition, but I have not looked for his gravesite yet.  



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"Doc" Powers

During the summer, I read the fall 2014 issue of SABR's Baseball Research Journal. The issue included a short piece by Robert D. Warrington about physician Michael “Doc” Powers, "a catcher who played primarily for the Philadelphia Athletics and whose baseball career was cut short by his untimely death." Powers was injured running into a wall while catching a foul ball during the first game played at Shibe Park on April 12, 1909, and he died on April 26.

Powers first played in the major leagues for the Louisville Colonels in 1898 and he also played part of the 1899 season for the team. His career batting statistics are not especially notable, but he was apparently a fine defensive catcher who was well-regarded by pitchers. 

In any case, the part of the story that caught my eye is that he was ultimately buried in Saint Louis Cemetery, Louisville, which is very close to my house. Using findagrave, I discovered the approximate location of his headstone and found it fairly easily on one of my daily walks.

I took these photos in early August:

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More on Athletic Salaries at Louisville

University of Louisville Interim Athletic Director Vince Tyra cut his own salary this past week -- from $1.2 million a year to "only" $850,000. Sports columnist Tim Sullivan notes that this might make him more likely to land the permanent AD job. Readers may remember I commented about the $1.2 million salary already.

In any case, that first linked story above included Tyra's reasoning for slicing his own salary to $850K:

Tyra said that in examining the athletic department's costs, he looked up the salaries of the other athletic directors in the ACC and averaged the top three, which generated $854,000. As a result, he said he asked to have his salary lowered from $1.2 million to $850,000.

Today, I had a back-and-forth discussion with Sullivan on twitter concerning Tyra's status and pay:

To arrive at a salary, he used top 3 ACC salaries for ADs. Ridiculous. They're surely far more experienced. On academic side, we know the private schools pay more.

— Rodger Payne (@rapayn01) February 10, 2018

When the University was increasing faculty salaries a couple of years ago, no one was paid a new salary obtained by averaging the three highest paid comparable position salaries in the ACC. For one thing, UofL salaries were far under baseline school comparisons and the increase only resulted in salaries that were slightly better than before. Faculty in Arts and Sciences are still paid well below their peers -- especially compared to the highest paid ACC faculty, which tend to be at the private schools. And of course those were the last raises faculty received unless they were promoted in rank -- or managed to get a competing job offer.

Sullivan also pointed out that my thinking didn't account for Tyra's business experience. He asked, via twitter, "If Bill Gates wanted the job, would you pay him as an entry level employee?"

I replied:

Would any other Power conference school have valued Tyra's experience at that salary? Unlikely. Also, what is market value of the job? Jurich's pay was clearly major outlier.

— Rodger Payne (@rapayn01) February 10, 2018

Sullivan replied to my first question by linking to a 2010 NY Times article noting that a number of schools have hired ADs from business.

A few anecdotes makes answer maybe. All those hires were also alums, so presumably network capacity played a role. Also, was *Tyra* valued? Guy quoted in piece says 200 applications for these jobs.

— Rodger Payne (@rapayn01) February 10, 2018

As for the market value of the ADs, I found this:

Latest data I could find: "According to USA Today, athletic directors at Division 1 universities whose football teams play in the Football Bowl Subdivision made about $515,000 on average in 2013...a 14 percent increase over 2011."https://t.co/kxeGolJ6ht

— Rodger Payne (@rapayn01) February 10, 2018

So $850,000 per year for a novice AD still seems outrageous to me. I know the data is 4+ years old, but consider this quote from the article: "many of them are paid like CEOs, with many making salaries in the high six figures. A handful even make more than $1 million a year."

Again: Many paid like CEOs. Many in high 6 figures. A handful over a million.

Yet, that has been Vince Tyra's starting salary level.

College Sports at UofL remain broken.


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Anyone want a job paying at least $100K per month?

Today, the Louisville Courier Journal tweeted this story:

Vince Tyra says he's interested in becoming Louisville's permanent athletic director https://t.co/RRQzxYvFXv

— Courier Journal (@courierjournal) January 25, 2018

From my personal twitter account, I replied:

UofL is paying him $100,000 per month. Who wouldn't be interested in that kind of extravagant pay at a public university?

Imagine if we paid adjunct professors according to the same logic. There are some generating big bucks in annual tuition revenue!

But are paid horribly.

— Rodger Payne (@rapayn01) January 25, 2018

That sort of set me off...but I started replying from my professional account:

Here's the adjunct faculty math.

$1500 tuition per in-state student per 3 hour class.

Assume 30 students/class.

Assume 8 classes/year.

That's $360,000/year in revenue.

Likely pay? About $25K if courses taught as part-timer. Paid maybe twice that as one-year term faculty.

— Rodger Payne (@RodgerPayne) January 25, 2018

There are Biology sections with 100s of students, so that revenue figure could be vastly under-estimated. Many departments have Intro sections with 100 to 300 students.

— Rodger Payne (@RodgerPayne) January 25, 2018

I realize that the argument Athletics would make is that the market produces plenty of adjuncts to teach for low pay...but talented ADs are scarce.

How do we know that? Tyra came from business background with college sports career decades ago.

Is that a rare skill set?

— Rodger Payne (@RodgerPayne) January 25, 2018

Incidentally, UofL is also paying an inexperienced basketball coach nearly $1 million. Would he have rejected the job if paid half that, or less?

Generally, the coach salary scale is a disgrace, made apparent by this transaction as much as the $7.7 m Pitino would have made

— Rodger Payne (@RodgerPayne) January 25, 2018

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Foundation Forensic Audit

Have you been following the media coverage of the University of Louisville Foundation's Forensic Audit?  I've ended up reading some of the report, but haven't had an opportunity to go through all of it. However, I wanted to post this to serve as a place I can find media links easily. I meant to post about the audit a few weeks ago, but I've been sick, we traveled to Michigan, and time simply got away from me.

There are a lot of outrageous findings in there, some of which I have previously discussed on the blog -- such as the salary of top administrators and compensation for athletics personnel. Even the Board of Trustees chair says the audit "paints a disturbing picture."

Some Foundation personnel authorized multimillion dollar loans to "assets" that were really subsidiaries of the Foundation that had no significant cash value. They used those funds to repay other loans and to pay secret salaries. This trick drained perhaps tens of millions of dollars from the Foundation, but the costs were hidden by the decision to list the "program" as an investment asset.

Decision makers initiated terrible real estate transactions (including the dubious purchase of a Golf Course) and invested in start-up projects that ended up losing big bucks. The University bought nearly $10 million in athletic tickets during the audit period, including $800,000 annually for football and men's basketball season tickets. Top personnel often made these decisions without fully informing the Board other than in a cursory way. Often, they exceeded discretion that had been granted to them. For example, they exceeded spending for particular projects.

Here is a rundown of some egregious personnel spending:

$   1.7 million additional (secret) compensation for joint Univ./Foundation employees
$ 21.8 million deferred compensation plan for top University officials (some also Fdtn)
$   4.9 million for salaries of Athletics Association personnel

That adds to over $28 million!

Athletics is disputing some parts of the audit.



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Athletics: Follow the Money

Two weeks ago, I blogged about "Papa" John Schnatter's widely publicized comment that "Until you fix athletics, you cannot fix this university." As I wrote, local journalists and University of Louisville leaders reacted to that remark as if they did not see any problems with Athletics -- and could not conceive of them.

For example, in today's Louisville Courier-Journal, Athletics Board member Bill Stone was quoted offering "praise and support for [Athletics Director Tom] Jurich's leadership and said that other areas of the university are what needs fixing."

'Oh my god, our athletic department is the envy of the country," Stone said. "... We need to put our effort into University Hospital and bring that health care facility back to where it was, where it was the place of choice. That's where we need to spend our attention, not on what works.'

Local radio personality Terry Meiners was also puzzled: “'His comments at the board meeting made zero sense to me,' Meiners said. 'And I mean zero-point-zero.... Everybody’s a little baffled with this one.... I grew up here,' Meiners said. 'I’ve seen the difference in the growth of the school starting Day 1 with Jurich. It’s as if he’s built an entire civilization that we were thirsting for in our community.'”

Despite the apparent bewilderment of local elites, my post referenced some potential areas of concern and linked to several of my previous posts on the topic. Additionally, in the interim between the first story and today's, reporter Tim Sullivan did some research:

Stephen Clark, a tenured professor who has spent 18 years at U of L, perceives Jurich not as “invisible” but “untouchable.” 

“Athletics is truly untouchable at this university,” Clark said via e-mail. “It has a different set of rules than all the schools within the university. That goes for things such as ‘conflicts of interest’ particularly. 

“... While athletics means so much to a university, the athletic director and coaches should be under the control of the administration of the university and should operate under parallel guidelines. I don't think that's true at U of L.” 

Student Body President Aaron Vance, whose office entitles him to a seat on the Board of Trustees, seconded Schnatter’s vague statements in a post-meeting tweet: “Papa gets it,” Vance wrote. “Something we have all been thinking here for years.”  

...The U of L Athletics Association operates independently of the university’s general fund and boasts at least 15 straight years of balanced budgets, but its spending patterns could be seen as extravagant in those departments with tightening belts and by those students dealing with rising debt.  Monday, Vance's Twitter feed included a copy of a 2011-12 student government resolution urging U of L to abolish its $50-per-semester student athletics fee.

This week, Athletics is firing back. Yesterday, as the C-J reported, Associate athletics director Kevin Miller "presented an information sheet detailing the amount of money the athletics department provides to the university and vice versa." First, Athletics did recognize that some of their costs are borne by the rest of the University:

According to the document, the athletic department receives a total of $7.344 million in benefits from the university and U of L student fees. Those benefits are $3.263 million in expenses, mostly related to the costs of utilities at the sports facilities; $1.323 million in gender-equity funding; $829,900 in assistance to boost student-athlete academics; and $1.928 million in student fees ($50 per student per semester). 

What about the other side of the relationship?

In turn, athletics reportedly accounts for $30.6 million in tuition, room, board and books for the university due to the presence of student-athletes, managers, spirit groups and the pep band at the school, according to the information sheet.   

The athletic department also provided $4 million to the U of L general fund ($2 million in 2013-14 and $2 million in 2016-17), according to the document.

I have previously mentioned the relatively paltry sums (a few million dollars) that Athletics has provided during particularly difficult years for the University. In reality, those mostly offset the student fees they collect.

The $30.6 million is a more interesting question. Does Athletics subsidize education for all of those students, or does this figure include funds paid by students enrolled in the University? I suspect the latter since the 2014 and 2015 Athletics audit posted online revealed only about $13 million in total athletic scholarships.

So what is missing from the figures Athletics provided yesterday?

First, if the discussion is going to consider revenues collected by one institution thanks to the spending of the other institution's students, then UofL should receive credit for ticket sales to students (and alumni). I haven't seen a breakdown focusing only on students and alums, but UofL athletics collected about $27 million in ticket sales in 2015. For 2016, media reports placed those revenues at just under $30 million.

Not all students or alumni attend games, of course, but many watch those events on television or listen on radio. UofL Athletics has been collecting significant sums from direct TV deals and shared payments from the Atlantic Coast Conference: about $13 million in media rights fees and $7 million from the ACC. That's $20 million more thanks to students, alumni and other fans of the University's teams.

UofL Athletics also collects about $29 million in contributions from donors. As I've blogged previously, some academic research suggests that those donors might otherwise give to the University if Athletics was not asking them for cash.

Finally, there is the matter of the University of Louisville name. When individual UofL athletes depart the campus, a few become stars in the NBA or NFL and help their franchises collect big profits. Presumably, the players are rewarded with lucrative salaries.

However, the largest portion of former UofL basketball players (which is UofL's most lucrative sport) toil in relative anonymity in development leagues or foreign leagues. The players are presumably more skilled and experienced once they leave campus, but they no longer generate nearly the same revenues for their new programs. UofL fans cheer these players, and pay for tickets, sweatshirts, and TV ads, precisely because they wear the cardinal red of the local sports team and perform their feats on local courts and fields.

Does UofL Athletics pay the University for this association? No. Instead, Athletics collected $23 million in licensing and royalties in 2013.

Literally, Athletics rakes in tens of millions of dollars annually thanks to its affiliation with the University.


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Fix UofL Athletics?

At a University of Louisville Board of Trustees meeting earlier this week, Board member John Schnatter -- of Papa John's Pizza fame -- said the following in an open session (link includes live video from the open part of the Board meeting):

“The athletics thing scares me … Until you fix athletics, you cannot fix this university,” Schnatter said.... 

[Interim University President] Postel, in an unrelated presentation during the meeting, said the university has an urgent need for operating cash in case of an emergency. 

Schnatter interjected, linking the university’s cash needs to the ongoing expansion of Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, where the Cards play football. 

“We’re doing this by the skin of our teeth. We’re going to put $60 million in a stadium – by the way, it’s my stadium,” Schnatter said, laughing. “And we’re $5 million over budget and we’ve got 10 days cash on hand.** That’s crazy.”

Much of the reporting about Schnatter's remarks made it seem as if no one understands what he was talking about: "Pressed for plausible explanations of Schnatter’s statements, insiders have spent a lot of time scratching their heads and studying possible scenarios."

In his column in today's sports page, Tim Sullivan speculated about several angles that parallel my own thinking and writing about this topic:

This much, though, is plain: with revenues rising at the top tier of college athletics (by $304 million for the 50 power conference schools in 2015), the quasi-amateur sports arms race strikes more and more observers as obscene. Dollars devoted to attracting recruits and rewarding coaches with ever-glitzier facilities and ever-sweeter pay packages are inconsistent with the experiences of other students and staff and only available because of an athletic program’s affiliation with a specific school. 

Too often, though, administrators at those schools have little say over whether those dollars might serve some higher purpose somewhere else on campus. Those athletic departments that retain nearly all of the money they generate, often while appropriating student fees and off-loading certain expenses on the university’s general fund, essentially operate in a parallel universe that can be a burden on the rest of the university. 

If that’s what Papa John is talking about, that’s a subject worth discussing, and one that applies to many major schools. 

University of Louisville, confronting a $48 million budget cut, needs to have this conversation immediately.


** Officials said at the meeting that the University actually now has 35 days of cash on hand -- thanks apparently to a recent hiring freeze accompanied by increased scrutiny on unit spending. Here's a November 2016 press release from Moody's explaining about why this number is important.

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College Baseball 2016

I went to Jim Patterson stadium today to see the Louisville Cardinals beat the North Carolina State Wolfpack 6-1 in baseball. Both teams are ranked in the top 10 and have decent chances of playing in Omaha this summer.

The Cards started former ace (and very high 2015 draft pick) Kyle Funkhouser. He went 7 strong innings, yielding only 1 run, 2 hits, and 3 walks in 7 innings plus. He struck out 8 batters and looked fairly impressive, though the walks have been an issue for him. His fastball was consistently 93-94-95. He walked a batter in the first to get in trouble when a called strike that was called ball four would have yielded a strike out-caught stealing double play. He also walked the last batter he faced, which yielded the one run he allowed.

NC State's offense didn't do much, but their first baseman is Preston Palmeiro, son of Rafael:

Their shortstop today was Joe Dunand, nephew of Alex Rodriguez. A lot of his mannerisms seem borrowed from his uncle. 

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College Sports are Broken at Louisville

As I mentioned last week, the same day that the Kentucky legislature agreed to cut University of Louisville funding by 4.5% (roughly a $6.3 million annual spending reduction), the Athletic Department announced that football coach Bobby Petrino had been given a 7-year contract worth over $30 million. He'll be the 12th highest paid college football coach in the land, making over $4.25 million annually.

Today's sports section featured a story about the team hiring a new offensive coordinator at $607,000 per year in salary. The same story mentions that three other newly hired coaches are making about $600,000 per year in combined salary, meaning that these four assistant coaches are making over $1.2 million next year. Given that this is only a fraction of the coaching staff, the football coaches' total compensation will almost surely exceed the size of the state budget cut the rest of the University is facing.

As I wrote last week, new assistant professors make about $54,000 in my department at UofL. Even figuring nearly 30% in benefits, the University could hire 85 assistant professors for the cost of the football staff.

There's more recent news along these lines if you pay attention. For example, the front page of the February 4 sports section of the Courier-Journal carried news that the University is seeking $55 million to (again) expand the football stadium.

These stories highlight much that is wrong at my University and with big-time college athletics. Before I list them, I know the arguments that boosters make. Basically, they argue that big-time college sports are a competitive business and these salaries and stadium costs reflect "the market" conditions. Athletic Director Tom Jurich, for instance, defended his contract to Petrino with these words: "This is a very competitive business. There's a very, very small handful of great coaches in this country. I think that's very self-explanatory. It's obvious that we have one of them. So I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that he stays with us, that he finishes his career with us." The same article claims that "None of this is money from the university, or taxpayers, or student tuition or fees."

Frankly, these arguments are laughable.

First, as more-and-more student athletes have been arguing, they are essentially underpaid labor in a business that strictly limits what they can be compensated. In a free market, the star athletes make a lot more than the coaches. As Taylor Branch wrote in The Atlantic back in fall 2011, college athletes do not work in a market environment:

College athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene—corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as “student-athletes” deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmistakable whiff of the plantation. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is colonialism: college sports, as overseen by the NCAA, is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized. But it is, nonetheless, unjust. 

Second, market competition is artificially restricted. New business cannot spring up to compete against NCAA division I football or basketball programs. These businesses have formed a cartel, as Joe Nocera has written: "the N.C.A.A.’s real role is to oversee the collusion of university athletic departments, whose goal is to maximize revenue and suppress the wages of its captive labor force, a k a the players." He continues:

The N.C.A.A. has neither an antitrust exemption nor a player’s union to negotiate with. In other words, it lacks some of the legal protections that shield professional sports from antitrust suits. What it has, instead, is a work force full of young adults dreaming of becoming pros and willing to sign any document, no matter how onerous, if it will help them reach that goal. The document the N.C.A.A. forces them to sign completely stacks the deck against them.

Third, college sports are highly subsidized by government taxpayers and students (as I've blogged previously). The "free market" in college sports is cash-rich partly because some revenues are guaranteed and some costs are paid by third parties who do not directly benefit from athletics. Only about a dozen big schools do not subsidize their athletic programs and about another dozen could survive without subsidies. Some programs receive tens of millions of dollars in subsidies. The total amounts involved are truly staggering: "Public universities poured more than $10 billion over the last five years into their athletics programs."

At Louisville, about 20% of subsidies come explicitly from student fees and the total amount of subsidies averaged about $10 million annually from 2010-2014 (for a total of nearly $50 million). Again, for emphasis, in recent years the University has transferred about $2 million per year in student fees to athletics. Athletics has at least sometimes transferred a similar sum back to the University, but that is often framed as a generous gift from athletics rather than a repayment for subsidies.

Fourth, college football and basketball depend upon television revenue that is itself distorted by non-market limits on competition. This is from Reason magazine, so it is admittedly the extreme version of the libertarian argument. Nonetheless, the point it makes about the cost of doing business is true:

In an ideal world there would be property rights in, and markets for, spectrum. Unfortunately, the federal government nationalized the airwaves in 1927 and since then only licenses their use. Today, wireless broadband providers like Verizon and AT&T must bid at auction for the spectrum licenses they use, and this bidding helps ensure that the valuable airwaves are allocated efficiently to their best uses. Television broadcasters, on the other hand, have never had to bid for airwaves. The Federal Communications Commission licenses spectrum to station owners in exchange for a promise that they will operate in the public interest—and that includes making their programming available for free over-the-air and supported by commercial advertising.

Basically, there's a lot of extra cash in TV because the networks don't pay market prices for the right to use the spectrum. It creates a lot of funny money when they sell ads for programs.

Beyond these free market arguments, there are other economic (and ethical) reasons to challenge UofL athletic spending.

Sports competes with academics for philanthropy and other funds. Athletic Director Jurich notes that the stadium expansion will be privately funded, but that just means that UofL academics will be competing with the rest of the University to find new funding to replace funds lost to budget cuts.

Finally, consider the top-dollar nepotism at work in UofL Athletics. Tom Jurich's son Mark Jurich works for the Athletic Association in a variety of capacities. The former campus baseball star makes over $160,000 per year.

Bobby Petrino's son Nick is now the wide receivers coach for his father's team and probably makes $150,000 since that seems to be the minimum UofL coaches make. Petrino son-in-law LD Scott makes $150,000, according to that USA Today database.

A few years ago, Rick Pitino's son Richard served as an assistant basketball coach for two years. 

There's nothing like strong family ties, amirite?


---------------------------------------
Note: This is the third in a recent series about the political economy of the University of Louisville.

Part 1: It's Good to Be the King posted April 12, 2016, concerns President Jim Ramsey's lucrative relationship with Texas Roadhouse.

Part 2: Winner-Take-All in the University Setting posted April 15, 2016, discusses the stagnation in assistant professor salaries, juxtaposed against the explosion in university president compensation.


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2015 NCAA Tournament

I filled out a number of brackets this year, most forecasting the University of Kentucky to win the men's college national basketball championship. Unfortunately, I think that was and is the safest prediction.

Here are my only two entries in (different) pools that return cash from my friends and/or colleagues. I entered some other national competitions with microscopic chances of winning money from large prize pools. My chances in those pools is now essentially zero and was never very high. I did pick against Kentucky in some of those. Typically, I picked Arizona over UK since they are viewed as the nation's second best team.

This entry features Arizona in the Final Four. Also, I had West Virginia beating Maryland and Michigan State beating Virginia. I inaccurately had Louisville losing to Northern Iowa, so I clearly was betting against the ACC here:

Entry 2 has Arizona in the Final Four, as well as Oklahoma. I accurately forecast Wichita State defeating Kansas in this bracket as well. Once again, I had too little faith in Louisville:

Simply click on those brackets for larger images.


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SABR Day

Photo credit: TJ Perreira on Flickr. 

Today was SABR Day 2015, an annual Saturday in January event featuring local SABR chapter meetings across the United States. I attended the one in Louisville at 10 this morning.

The guest speaker was former major league player Chris Burke, who delivered a worthwhile presentation.  I especially appreciated the fact that he answered our questions fairly directly, even when they involved controversial subjects such as steroid use in baseball.  Burke grew up in Louisville, played his college baseball at Tennessee (All-American SS on the runner-up College World Series finalist team) and then had a fairly significant role on a Houston Astros team that made the World Series in 2005. In the NLDS that season, he hit the series winning home run in the 18th inning of game 4.

After Burke finished and departed, I gave a presentation: "Can Small Market Teams Compete? Revisited." That link takes you to my PowerPoint. As the title suggests, this was a much updated version of a talk I gave to the same local SABR chapter in April 2000.

My 2000 presentation focused on the Oakland A's, much as Michael Lewis did in his 2003 book Moneyball. However, today's talk focused on the 2014 Kansas City Royals, the first small market team to make the World Series since Cleveland did it in 1997. For my talk, I defined the smallest handful of cities as small market: Milwaukee, Kansas City, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Oakland shares the Bay area with San Francisco, but is often viewed as small market.

While the A's of 15 years ago emphasized on-base percentage, college pitchers, and "Ken Phelps All Stars" (such as Geronimo Berroa and Matt Stairs), the 2014 Royals apparently identified new market inefficiencies: multiple hard-throwing short relievers, terrific outfield defense, fly-ball pitch-to-contact starters, and an all-star quality catcher.




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Baseball!!

I spent much of my Saturday afternoon watching a baseball game between two teams that were in last year's College World Series, University of Indiana and University of Louisville.

Indiana won  three of the teams' four match-ups last season, including the first round game in the CWS, and the Hoosiers won again Saturday 6-2. 

Nonetheless, the temperature was in the 50s and Jim Patterson Stadium is beautiful:

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Saturday: College Hoops Checkup

Louisville-Notre Dame, March 9, 2013; Photo credit: Jason Gainous

I managed to attend five University of Louisville basketball games this season -- home games versus Syracuse (a tough loss), Marquette, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Notre Dame. In the two games last week, the home Cardinals essentially destroyed their opponents with smothering defense and timely shooting. In Saturday's game, the Cards atypically didn't even attempt a three-point field goal in the first 7 or 8 minutes of the game. Instead, they took the ball inside and made easy baskets.

It is very difficult to return to the Final Four, but this year's Louisville team seems to have the ability (thanks largely to that terrific defense).

Meanwhile, Kansas got walloped in a road game at Baylor. I didn't see the game, but based on my halftime check-in, it appears the defense completely broke down in the second half. Oh, and KU seemed to have rare foul trouble. Kansas too could return to the Final Four, but that's hard to write on the heels of their worst loss since 2006.


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Coach Pitino on Guns

Photo credit: Bailey Richards

Today's Courier-Journal had a short piece about an unusual portion of coach Rick Pitino's recent exchange with the press about guns. Pitino, like Jim Boeheim, the Syracuse basketball coach, thinks that gun control should be a very high priority. Here's how Pitino expressed his thoughts:

“The fact that every single person would not want it (gun control) would be a mystery,” Pitino said. ”This is not the beginning of American civilization where we need guns ’cause it’s the wild, wild west. We’re not talking about a hunting license.

“There should not be guns in our society. We all know that."

The University of Louisville basketball coach continued:

If they [elected politicians in DC] were doing what’s right for America, that next day (after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting), the country would demand gun control. So Jim (Boeheim) is right. We don’t need that in our society. But more important than that, I don’t know how anybody lives that. I don’t know how anybody could close their eyes in those families.

“There can be no good that comes out of that (tragedy), except immediate gun control.... 

We don’t need guns in our society.

Video


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2012 Hardy House draft

Yesterday (Saturday April 14), all but one member of the Hardy House fantasy baseball league met in Louisville to conduct the annual player auction. Guys flew or drove in from Chicago, Cincinnati, Lexington, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C., though four team owners reside in Louisville.

That photo is courtesy of Rich Puszczewicz, who is obviously not pictured. You can see his brother Jim third from right in front of the brick wall.

Jim took this photo, which includes a photo of Rich sitting to my left:

Friday night, most of us attended the home opener for the Louisville Bats and watched the team win 4-2. Saturday, Ohioan Mike Toguchi purchased Columbus Clipper Lonnie Chisenhall (we can buy anyone on a 40 man roster).

Unfortunately, Kevin Hamrick was at a debate-related event in Las Vegas and was unable to attend -- but he managed to have a good auction on the phone.

I'll post the annual piece about my team soon.

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The Cuban Missile Report

Tonight, I went with a group of friends to see the Louisville Bats against the Gwinnett Braves. Behind Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman, the Bats won 7-0.

Much-discussed prospect Chapman struck out 7 in five innings. More importantly, he issued only one walk and was generally in control of the strike zone -- so long as you don't worry about the 2 or 3 times he threw the ball above his catcher all the way back to the screen (officially, he issued 2 Wild Pitches, which require men on base). Many of his pitches, especially early in the game, were clocked at nearly 100 mph. He bested that mark a few times, including one pitch of 103 mph that was met with cheers from the crowd.

The game was supposed to start at 7 pm, but it was nearly 7:45 when the first pitch was thrown. Louisville suffered a brief thunderstorm prior to the event. My friends and I took advantage of the time to enjoy the $1 pre-game brews at Brownings.

Though Chapman was long gone, we stayed through the final out (partly redeeming my early exit from Saturday's game). Whatever the claimed attendance, there were very few fans in the stands at the end.


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Berry, LeCure and the Bats

Yesterday, I went to Louisville Slugger field a bit early to check out honky tonk singer Johnny Berry as part of Budweiser's $2 "craft beer" promotion. Berry sounded great, but he stopped playing at 5:30 even though the game began at 6:05.

In the game, pitcher Sam LeCure dominated the visiting Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees. He was perfect through 4 innings, but then walked 2 batters in the fifth when it appeared that he had lost his rhythm. Unfortunately, I had to leave the game at that point to have dinner with my oldest daughter, but I caught some of the game on the radio and learned later that LeCure threw a 1-hitter rather than a no-no. The final score was 5-0.


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Bad Press

Yesterday, soon after awakening on a rainy weekend morning, I went outdoors to pick up the newspaper. The bagged Sunday paper was heavy with ads, so I immediately sorted the recyclables from the sections with real content.

Very quickly, I noticed that the sports section, which I usually read first during baseball season, was missing. That's not good in Louisville, the day after the Kentucky Derby.

The front section was also missing.

The Metro section was not included. The only sections included in the bag were those that could be printed in advance -- like the television listings, real estate ads, and Features section.

I found the customer service number in Saturday's paper and dialed it to complain, but a recorded voice said the newspaper had a technical problem and missing sections would not be delivered until after noon. Later, the paper's webpage said a "press failure" explained non-delivery to thousands of customers. Ironically, one section customers did receive included a piece from the publisher touting the paper's circulation rate -- to readers "passionate about our products."

Finally, this morning, the missing sections were delivered with the Monday paper.

I'm sure thousands of out-of-town Derby visitors were unfavorably impressed by the Sunday paper this weekend. The paper's special Derby insert will not be a valued souvenir for those who left town before the company managed to print the news of Saturday's race.

The size of the paper and the diversity of the local writing staff has been in steep decline for years (thanks most recently to ad revenues lost to Craigslist and Ebay), but this was a ridiculous moment for the paper.


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Derby weekend

This Saturday, Louisville's Churchill Downs will host the 136th Kentucky Derby, typically called the most exciting two minutes in sports.

I've never been to the track for the Derby, but I usually watch the race on TV and experience some of the other related events. "Thunder Over Louisville" ("the largest annual pyrotechnics display in North America") is visible from my house and today I saw a bit of the Pegasus Parade.

This year, some locals are already buzzing about the forthcoming film "Secretariat," which will tell the story of the greatest racing horse of them all -- the 1973 Triple Crown Winner. The film is slated to debut in October.

The 1973 Belmont Stakes was perhaps the greatest sporting achievement I've witnessed in my life:



View the film's trailer.

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